My family is so blended. So blended to the point where it’s hard to explain who everyone is and how we’re all related. We were recently asked how we should put our family name on the order of worship for the lighting of the fourth Advent candle. I semi-panicked, it’s a church that has invited me to provide pulpit supply during Advent, but our relationship is relatively new. I certainly haven’t talked about all the other parents we factor into our daily dealing or the way we all work together. I suggested, “well, maybe you can put Williams/Schuller/Leonard family?” There was a pause, before it was agreed upon to use all of our first names.

As blended and ultra-blended families are becoming more common, we still find that we rely on traditional ideas of what families have to look like, or what containers hold them together—like having the same last name. Even though families are increasingly complex in their composition—or as fewer people are feeling pressured to marry or have children, we haven’t adapted our language or broadened our understanding of what constitutes family to keep up. This leaves those in families that are outside of the typical structure in a constant state of “not family enough.” This comes up every time a school form has room for only one set of parents, or a child is given the materials to make a mother’s day gift in class, but they have two moms. Or three dads—there are so many co-parenting reconfigurations of family that the standard simply does not even attempt to cover. And while, yes, it’s okay to write, “See attached” and add a sheet with a diagram of parents, step-parents, custodial guardians, and siblings, that doesn’t make it any easier for those with unconventional family structures to feel like their family is legitimate and accepted. Or that their choices were the right ones.

The question was asked at my in-discernment renewal interview in October of how I expect to explain my less-than-stellar track record of marriages to churches that might call me as a minister. I’m prepared for this, it’s a joke that gets told about the woman who is on her 4^th husband. It’s a way to discredit someone who has expressed an opinion, or to make a comment on their choice of attire. The joke has nothing to do with me, so I was able to respond without batting an eye that each marriage had a different reason for dissolving, and that the layers of what makes a family are still valid, even though the world calls them “broken.” A few weeks ago I stayed the night at the home of my ex-husband and his wife with their (and two of my/our) children while they were in the hospital giving birth to their newest addition. That was an expression of family. I might have been mom to only half the kids in the house, but the other two are family in a way that our structures haven’t figured out how to name yet. My daughter Dorothy and their daughter Madelynn are not sure the word for one another, so they teeter between sisters and cousins and besties.

It’s fitting to consider what we know about family during Advent. Mary represents a shattering of rigid “family” in a way that opens up to more generous forms, and for me this resonates deeply. In his book Radical Love, Patrick S. Cheng explores Mary as the “bearer of radical love.” In it he says, “Indeed, the Virgin Mary can be understood as the antithesis of ‘family values’ insofar as she erases the boundaries between the traditional family categories of parent, spouse, and child. This is significant because we can understand Mary as deconstructing gender and family roles, as opposed to merely reinforcing them as the Roman Catholic church and fundamentalist Christians would have us believe.” (pg. 87).  The pressure to conform to a Christian family structure is immense, but in reality, Christ was already stretching the definition just by the shape of the family he was born into.    

You can’t contain all families into a single tree. I understand that it confuses and may even threaten some people when they try to understand the way families like mine and many others function, but we are still very much loved by a God who sees our slightly-nebulous familial structure and is rooting for us through the immense amount of love and work that goes into maintaining blended families.